Engaging Stakeholders through Twitter: How Nonprofit Organizations are Getting More Out of 140 Characters or Less
Date
2012
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Publisher
Public Relations Review
Abstract
140 characters seems like too small a space for any meaningful information to be
exchanged, but Twitter users have found creative ways to get the most out of each Tweet by
using different communication tools. This paper looks into how 73 nonprofit organizations use
Twitter to engage stakeholders not only through their tweets, but also through other various
communication methods. Specifically, it looks into the organizations’ utilization of tweet
frequency, following behavior, hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages, retweets, and multimedia
files. After analyzing 4,655 tweets, the study found that the nation’s largest nonprofits are not
using Twitter to maximize stakeholder involvement. Instead, they continue to use social media
as a one-way communication channel, as less than 20% of their total tweets demonstrate
conversations and roughly 16% demonstrate indirect connections to specific users.
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Keywords
non-profit, nonprofit, stakeholders, social media, communication tools, research
Citation
Lovejoy, K., Waters, R. D., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Engaging stakeholders through Twitter: How nonprofit organizations are getting more out of 140 characters or less. Public Relations Review, 38(2), 313-318.